Important Notice

Pages

Monday, August 31, 2015

This is two blocks from my front door. I actually could have seen this from my balcony. The peloton goes by in the blink of an eye but traffic was screwed up for a couple hours around town. Not really much of a spectator sport but the energy was really fun.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

This is absolutely the best thing that I have eaten all summer...and that is saying a lot. I used some great black bread I bought at Mercadona. It was so good that I had it twice yesterday. I forgot to put on the pinch of salt on both occasions which is not like me at all to forget salt. I think that I need to make it again today, this time with the salt.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Outside Magazine recently
published “The 16
Best Places to Live in America: 2015” which gives praise to hipster
communities across the country where biking, skiing, kayaking, and other
outdoor sports consume the free-time and extra income of locals. I would wager
that all of these towns vote heavily Democrat and the overall mindset is
liberal rather than conservative. Valencia, not being part of America, doesn’t
qualify for the list but I thought I would scribble a little blurb in my city’s
favor.

Valencia
is a mix of big city sophistication (pop. 800,000), 2,000 years of history, and
a cozy beach town where you can escape to the country on a bike in a couple of
kilometers. My flat has neither central heat nor air yet I’m comfortable with the
windows wide open from March until late November. Great public transportation
in the form of underground metro, buses, and a bike-share program as well as
rail connections to the rest of Spain that are second to none. Very affordable
and the best part is that Valencia is in Spain!

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Monday, August 24, 2015

A long time ago I used to watch a TV learning series
called French in Action about a young boy and girl living in Pars. It
was for mid-level students of the language and dealt with basic situations and
presented grammar in context. Braquo is nothing like that
series. The language that the cops and gangsters speak has little to do with
school French. It’s like the writers have gone way out of their way to create a
unique language that is nothing but slang, profanity, and guttural shortening
of words. The dialogue reminds me a lot of Elmore Leonard in that it’s so
ungrammatical and riddled with slang that it barely qualifies as French.

First of all, this series is a gold mine of cool
French slang words beginning with the name, Braquo. What the hell is a “braquo.” On the website it says “Pris
dans un engrenage mortel, ils vont être obligés de monter au braquo.” Caught in a deadly
spiral they must pull off a braquo (armed robbery, heist). So “braquo”
ain’t in no dictionary and was found in a French rap song.

Next there is the intro music and credits to the series which are very
cool…and not too long. I loved The Wire, hated the intro music, ditto
that for The Sopranos, True Detective, and a lot of other series.

The casting is top-notch and everyone looks like who
they claim to be. I especially like the figure of Lemoine, a slimy little
gangster tough guy. The internal affairs cop is another skeezy piece of work.
Most of the actors have a distinctly un-Hollywood look to them; most would be
considered too scuzzy for USA movie work.

Crazy action scenes and realistic while running at a
breath-taking pace. The show basically took its style from The Shield
which was more or less the same theme of bad cops running wild. Braquo
has some cliffhangers guaranteed to keep you up way past your bedtime so be
warned that any attempt to watch a single episode may be all but impossible.

Friday, August 21, 2015

I was sitting in a café the other day, as I do every
day, when a young African boy asked me if I wanted to buy any of his wares—he
was hawking Polo® shirts. A lot of times I will buy something small from them
just because they are always polite. I once bought a round of socks for
everyone in a bar from one of these merchants but a 10€ shirt was too much.
I’ve noticed that you see far fewer of these ambulatory vendors in recent
years. Maybe I’m wrong but I have asked other people and they all agree with
this anecdotal observation. A few years ago young black African youths roamed
through every bar in town selling everything from cigarette lighters to
children’s toys. Perhaps the bad economy has forced them to find other ways to
make money.

I was busy typing away on my netbook and hardly gave
the young entrepreneur a second’s notice. Just before I started to politely
wave him away I thought to ask him if he would like something to drink. I
offered him a beer and he refused as he said that he was a Muslim. I always
play dumb and ask them why they can’t have alcohol, as if this is the craziest
thing in the world and it sort of is the craziest thing in the world. I’ve
always said that if Mohammed had really wanted to help his followers he would
have banned smoking.

The boy asked for an orange soda so I ordered it from
the proprietress. When the Chinese woman brought it to him I handed her what I thought
was sufficient change. It turned out that without my glasses I had mistaken a
.20€ coin for a .50€ so I was short .30€. The woman waved away my attempt to
give her the remainder when she realized that I was buying the soda for the
kid.

The Chinese here in Valencia are sort of famous for
their pecuniary prowess so for this woman to let the .30€ slide in this
transaction was unusual. I think she just thought it was nice that I was doing
this for a stranger. I have been going to this café for years and I always
treat this woman with exaggerated respect and politeness. I’ve always been
taught that it’s much, much easier to be decent to everyone than go through
life causing friction.

Of course, there is more than enough racism and
anti-immigrant sentiment in Spain to go around but I think that there isn’t the
malignant cancer of racism that seethes beneath the surface in much of the
United States. Immigration is a very complicated issue but it’s important not
to lose sight of the fact that we are talking about fellow human beings.

I'm not trying to pat myself on the back for parting with 1.20€ but I hope that
it made the boy feel, if only briefly, that not everyone is against him in this
strange world. It made me feel good. Do Donald Trump and his ilk feel good
after they rant about the horrors of illegal immigration?